Cape fire season highlights new problems

The City of Cape Town expressed concern at attacks and threats against firefighters attempting to extinguish fires.

Cape Town - The City of Cape Town on Saturday expressed concern at attacks and threats against firefighters attempting to extinguish fires, mainly in informal settlements.

The city’s fire and rescue service responded to just under 10 000 fires during the past fire season, compared to a total of 11 347 in the 2014/15 fire season.

This has emerged in statistics reflecting the service’s operations between November 2015 and April 2016, mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith said.

Of the 9983 fire incidents across the city over the five-month period, 78.6 percent (7 845) were classified as bush, grass, or rubbish fires. Residential fires, both formal and informal, totalled 1499. There were 41 fatalities.

“We saw a drop in the number of incidents compared with the previous season, but we have to bear in mind that the last fire season was one of the worst on record and so that puts the figures for the most recent season into perspective. Our firefighters worked incredibly hard once again this season in spite of very trying circumstances,” Smith said.

While the number of incidents was down year-on-year along with a slight reduction in the number of fatalities, there had been a marked increase in the number of informal structures affected by fire - from 2358 in 2014/15 to 3981 in 2015/16.

“This can be attributed to the fact that we had a number of large informal settlement fires in Masiphumelele and Imizamo Yethu, among others. However, we cannot discount the fact that intimidation and sabotage of our firefighters played a role in compounding the fire damage,” he said.

The city had recorded numerous incidents in the past six months of firefighters being attacked or threatened while trying to respond to incidents, inevitably delaying efforts to suppress fires.

“There is also the continued concern about the number of fires that are started willfully or as a result of negligence. We dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to fire prevention education and awareness as well as fire suppression methods.

“In the past few years we have also increased our resources to better serve our communities, including new fire engines and additional manpower like the seasonal firefighters who left us at the end of April. But ultimately fire prevention and community safety is everyone’s business. We can significantly reduce the number of fires if everyone shares the responsibility,” Smith said.

On Saturday, the city’s fire and rescue service was participating in an event in Bredasdorp to mark International Firefighters Day, commemorated across the world in the first week of May.

These commemorations took the form of highlighting the skill, training, and abilities of firefighters, as well as raising the profile of the fire and rescue service in the towns and communities they served, he said.

– African News Agency